


blue silken sky and burning flag

by trell (qunlat)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Lowercase, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 09:38:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>there are islands, ace knows, where the people believe that the soul may never rest if it does not return to its earth: but luffy was never of earth and always of water and air, and that he died with his feet on the ground and not on the deck of a ship is only another injury.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	blue silken sky and burning flag

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [one piece ficathon](http://onepiece-ficathon.dreamwidth.org/1041.html). The prompt was, "ace & luffy, _it isn't ace that dies_."

the last few seconds play in his head without stopping, after. 

_ace, let’s go, ace,_ and then: a flash of heat, and in that moment ace knows. knows without turning, without seeing, what his stupid hotheaded inability to run from an insult has done, violent sick guilt slamming through him ahead of its source.

half a second of denial; an instant where he feels like he’s falling, disconnected from moment, like if he just blinks he’ll have the crucial second back, reality reverting. the stupid thought that if he just turns, if he just says, _no, wait,_ he’ll turn and see anything but what will be there—

and then ace turns and the gears of reality click, slot permanently into their place. 

luffy’s eyes are wide—his mouth open—the wound in his chest so severe that it hardly looks real, smoke and flecks of molten rock and everything inside him _burning._ akainu is a monolith over him, heat emanating from his hand in waves, the god of death stepped out of myth onto the field of battle to sear out the heart of a boy playing at hero.

this is the end, ace knows, even as the scream tears from his lungs. this is the end of everything, and certainly of him; the irredeemable point in the line, the thing he never comes back from, no air left on this earth for him to breathe. the world tilts under him, and even as he pitches towards luffy—the incongruously cold dirt under his hands sticks in his memory, the blood pounding in his ears, his own voice far away and breaking—he knows it to be too late. the crux of events receding behind him, every _if_ turned _if only._

 _ace, let’s go, ace,_ and then sudden silence—

*

luffy doesn’t die with a smile.

dies instead on an operating table in expressionless oblivion, the stench of seared flesh and antiseptic filling the little room, nothing of himself left in his features. no smile—no pride—nothing like roger, only a clean slate, death wiping everything wretchedly clean.

it’s all ace can think about, in the moment. after trafalgar steps out of the operating room, hands still bloody, mouth a flat line, after trafalgar tells him, after ace shoves him aside and into the room to see his brother, to see the _body—_

he screams at trafalgar, then. grabs him by the front of his sweatshirt and slams him into the wall, his other hand bleeding into flame, roars _why didn’t you save him, you incompetent bastard,_ slugs him across the jaw without stopping to breathe.

trafalgar throws him across the room. ace’s head hits a bulkhead; in an instant trafalgar’s on him, his hand at his throat, and he squeezes and squeezes and squeezes in all the wrong places (the right ones, of course, he’s a doctor) until there’s black blots dancing in ace’s eyes and his whole head is buzzing.

and ace wishes, desperately, desperately, that this man he’s never met will kill him right then and there, because surely it would be better than living, better than bearing what he’s done for the rest of his undeserved days. 

right in his face, trafalgar says, “it is not _my_ fault that _you killed your brother.”_

he’s the first one to say it, of all the ones that come after; the only one to say it out and clear and take it head-on, no separation of the deed and the person, not even _you got him killed;_ just _you killed your brother,_ out with it, no gray and no question of which side of the line ace fell so hard on.

*

he does not bury the body.

there are islands, ace knows, where the people believe that the soul may never rest if it does not return to its earth: but luffy was never of earth and always of water and air, and that he died with his feet on the ground and not on the deck of a ship is only another injury.

 _i want to be pirate king so i can have the most freedom on the whole sea,_ luffy had told him once, when they were still young and stupid and death wasn’t something they knew firsthand. the word _freedom_ had been some magic thing to him, to all of them, for ace from his name and for sabo from his birth, and for luffy—

luffy hadn’t been running from anything that ace could see, not like them, but he’d taken that word and wanted it just like they had, yearned for it, run out on the cliffs that faced open sea and shouted it with his palms raised towards the sky. like he knew exactly what it was; like maybe he had it already.

and so ace does not do him the disservice of a burial, in the end. days away from marineford—after trafalgar finally hauls him out of the room with what used to be luffy in it and drags him onto the deck, asks him in a strange and level voice what it is he wants to do—they hold a sailor’s funeral, ace and the first son of the sea and the surgeon all out on the deck with all of his crew. strangers all, and ace rails at that even as he feels sick at the thought of having to face those that loved luffy.

his hands shake too much to do the dirty part of it, and so it’s trafalgar that sews the body and the two rounds of cannon shot into a hammock taken from the crew quarters. his work is clinically clean and meticulous, and ace thinks numbly that after all stitches on fabric must be no different from sutures on people. manages not to look away as trafalgar makes the very last stitch through the nose with his sailmaker’s needle; tradition made vulgar irony, checking one last time for signs of life in someone long gone.

(luffy’s hat—so stupidly recovered for someone who would never wear it again—trafalgar sets carefully aside, looking strangely as though he doesn’t want to touch it. something violent in ace wants to sneer and ask if he thinks luffy’s still here to be offended that he’s disturbed it; wants to ask if the surgeon with sleepless bruises under his eyes and death etched into his hands in ink and luffy’s own blood is so superstitious.) 

(he doesn’t.)

the sun is high in the sky when they gather, beaming down on the flag at half-mast. the first son of the sea speaks first, and he calls luffy brave and fierce and a warrior; and he isn’t wrong but it makes the bile rise in ace’s throat all the same, because it wasn’t bravery or war that luffy died for.

he himself manages only, “i’m sorry,” choked, aware of all eyes on him and not caring, curled over the body with his eyes stinging hot. it’s all he can manage, nowhere within the realm of enough. luffy deserves more, as he always has; a standing ovation, a mention of his kindness, his spirit, his smile, his love.

in place of it all he only bends his head against the hammock, tears running down his nose. offers his wordless pain because there is nothing else in him left to give, his life forfeit. 

when he finally raises his head he’s shocked to see trafalgar standing beside him with his forehead bent low against clasped hands, a worn-looking rosary between them, out of sight from everyone else. he’s saying something under his breath, and all ace catches is _grant him peace and tranquility._

“you’re wrong,” ace says, anger enough to draw forth words, and trafalgar starts, looks down at him in surprise. “there’s no peace in freedom. luffy wouldn’t want anything to do with it.”

“ah,” trafalgar says faintly, “i see,” and hides the rosary in his pocket before stepping quickly away. 

after that they bring out the plank and they slide the body into the waves, and the ship’s boatswain fires off seventeen shots into the air—so few, ace thinks faintly, because of him, because of him—and there’s only the very last thing left, a too-cheerful hat still waiting its turn.

ace sets it ablaze before tossing it after its owner, the only part of luffy that truly gets to be free.

*

the strawhats find him. 

one by one, they meet him and ask him what happened to luffy; and to each he tells the truth, the whole truth, so that they can judge him by it.

they blame him, rightly. he can see it in their eyes and their faces and the way they look away; none of them say it. the fiery girl with hair to match comes closest to it, demands, “so why didn’t you save him?” and opens her mouth to keep shouting; but even she stops short, deflates, leaves in silence.

she’s the first to find him, and he expects the rest to be worse, but again and again they refuse to lay the blame aloud where it belongs. the sniper is painfully sympathetic, like he thinks if their places were switched things would have been no different; the cyborg is grim. the swordsman is deathly silent, and the cook smokes like a chimney through the entire conversation and leaves abruptly at the end in a cloud of it. the devil with the violin seems more interested in his instrument than ace’s words, sad and absent as he plucks at the strings.

the witch of ohara tells him only, “i wish that things had been different,” her voice very quiet, demeanor washed-out and ghostly, running on empty. 

only the little half-human doctor is stupid enough to forgive him, naïve to the end. “it wasn’t your fault,” chopper says earnestly, and, “it might have happened anyway.” that someone who hardly reaches above ace’s ankle is trying to console him is almost enough to make ace laugh. 

(he has not laughed in a very long time.) 

it drives him mad that none of the others will say what they’re thinking, that none of them will say what all of them know. all that’s left to ace is paying penance: that they won’t even grant him the chance to do that, that they won’t even say the cutting words that trafalgar law spat at him months before, _you killed your brother—_

well. perhaps it’s only what he deserves. 

*

ace doesn’t see the last honest man again until trafalgar makes the news two years later. the papers run the photo of his crucified corpse hanging from dressrosa’s battlements on the front page: a traitor’s death for treason against the knight of the windmills, against the king of dressrosa, gruesome spikes driven with cruel humor through his surgeon’s hands. 

there is so much blood on him it’s only trafalgar’s name in the headline that tells ace that he’s looking at the man that couldn’t save his brother, and three drinks deep he can almost believe that it’s all that someone like that deserves. (there have been a lot of drinks—every night, and every morning, and at every hour in between; and maybe if he keeps drinking he’ll never have to think again at all, never have to remember, and lucky that the last fool whose coattails he burned in the shakedown had so much coin for the drinking—)

six drinks later he can’t lie to himself any longer, and all that remains in him is pity: for trafalgar and for luffy, for himself, for the whole wretched lot of them. because that’s all there is for anyone born under the sun, in the end; death in agony, nothing gained and nothing accomplished, only blood enough to fill oceans.

and ace wonders (another drink later) if trafalgar screamed and whimpered, in the end, or died silent like luffy, the body unknowing that the soul had already gone. remembers, vividly, trafalgar snarling into his face _it is not my fault that you killed your brother;_ remembers luffy crying out _ace, let’s go, ace,_ the last words that ever left him, no thought in them for himself.

the last thing ace does before the dreamless darkness takes him is mumble _grant him peace and tranquility_ into his drink, for trafalgar’s sake.

*

later, during the war—they’d called marineford a war but it hadn’t been, _war_ is something more foul and insidious, a long-lived thing that settles on them and in them and chews up the bodies of pirates and marines alike, takes in people and spits out bones and leaves them all with nothing—he finds out that sabo’s alive. 

he finds out because sabo comes to find him, on the eve of what (ace learns later) will be a great battle. a brother he’d thought lost, a ghost from his childhood; an impossible apparition standing on the doorstep of the hovel ace occupies, bathed in the harsh too-bright light of day.

for a long moment ace only stares. thinks that this is it, the alcohol’s finally done in the last of his sanity, washed his mind away in its numbing tide. another dead brother, conjured by his guilt to make him pay.

“are you going to let me in?” sabo says.

when ace does—still staring, still shell-shocked and wordless and deeply hung over—his once-brother stares around the dark shack with faint distaste, nudges one of the empty bottles on the floor with the toe of his boot. he doesn’t pass comment, though, only says, “i thought we should talk. before i go.”

“go?” says ace, uncomprehending. “go where? you’ve only just arrived, you’re _alive,_ all this time i thought—we both thought,” and he breaks off, then, because already he’s stepped in it, brought up the sick and awful thing they might have danced around for minutes more. 

“i’m sorry,” sabo says, still looking idly around the shack, not looking at him, “that he never got to find out i was alive.”

ace doesn’t say anything. can’t say anything, throat tight and closed, doesn’t have anything to say that isn’t meaningless. what he’s done is leagues past _i’m sorry,_ into the kind of silent guilt where even an apology would be a slur against the deed, a weak string of words in the face of a crime so great that none remain.

sabo goes on, “i couldn’t remember much of anything, after the explosion. that’s why i never went to him, or you. i didn’t remember until after the day they ran his death in the papers.”

and he looks at ace at last, gaze cold. “you were supposed to take care of him.”

the words tear out of ace, despite everything. “i’m _so sorry,”_ anything, anything, to convey the depth of his regret, his shame, how well-deserved he knows his blame to be, “i’m so sorry, sabo, i fucked up, i fucked up so bad, i was so fucking stupid, it was all my fault—”

“you’re damn right,” sabo snaps, cuts off his babbling apology. ace shrinks against the wall he’s standing by, the fire in him an ember compared to the fury and disgust in sabo's expression.

a beat, and sabo twists away. drops back into something colder, denser, filling the room from wall to wall. ace slumps bonelessly the moment he's no longer pinned by sabo's gaze.

without looking back, sabo says, “they told me, when i found them. marco and the others, they told me what you did.” a pause. “before that, i thought—i thought i still had one brother left, to share the pain.”

it hits him like a physical blow. ace had thought nothing could hurt, anymore, not in the face of absolute guilt, absolute pain; but this—sabo, back from the dead, sabo, alive and no longer his brother, that hurts down to his very marrow, some old and hidden part of himself dredged up and broken open. “sabo,” he breathes.

“do you remember,” sabo says, like he hasn’t heard. “when we first met, and all the times after, when everyone would call you a demon, and say you didn’t deserve to live. i remember—i keep remembering, more and more, in pieces, and i remember how they talked about roger’s son, how they hated you just for what you were.”

“of course,” says ace, his own voice hardly reaching his ears, old pain flaring. “of course i remember.”

“i loved you,” sabo says, and ace’s mouth is dry. “they hated you, but i never did.” ace has never needed a drink more in his life; he needs a bottle of whiskey without a glass just to process what’s happening, just to be able to swallow.

“every time they said the cruelest things about you—every time you heard—i wanted to strangle them on the spot,” sabo continues. “i wanted to fight all of them. i wanted to stand on rooftops and scream at them and anyone that would listen that they were wrong, that you were better than that, that they had no right to condemn someone they’d never met.”

sabo looks back to him one last time, the boiling anger settled into something hard, his expression steeled. “i didn’t realize until i spoke to marco that they were right.”

and with that: he turns on his heel, and walks out the door. leaves ace to slide down to the floor with his knees giving way, knocking bottles aside with his landing. walks out of his life again just like he’d walked back into it less than half an hour before, enough time to have reached in and torn out his childhood, the last of his memories that the rot of guilt hadn’t eaten in full.

ace drinks himself into a stupor.

*

a week later he reads in the paper that sabo has died.

the body of the revolutionaries’ chief of staff found in the aftermath of a failed assault on mariejois with a musket round buried in his brain. a fluke, to die to such an inaccurate weapon, to be standing at just the right place to be struck. another brother—no longer a brother—gone, and ace still here, left with the weight of their lives, stolen from this world in an instant he didn’t prevent. 

ace burns the paper and drinks. and drinks, and drinks, and drinks until he can’t think or remember, until he can’t even grieve. drinks himself blind, and keeps drinking.

outside, the war wages on.


End file.
